Nicole Gratovsky: Dear inhabitants of planet TEDx!
The aim of our expedition to planet Earth was a search for intelligence.
Essentially, we were interested only in one question:
Are the inhabitants of this distant world intelligent?
Today, we’re going to look at the results of our journey to the solar system.
Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.
And for over 50 million Earth years,
this planetary ocean has been inhabited by cetaceans –
from here on we will simply refer to them as “dolphins”.
Alexander Gratovsky: At various locations in this ocean there are islands.
There, over the course of the last million years,
another species of life – humanoids –
appeared and multiplied at an astonishing rate.
From here on, we will simply refer to them as “people”.
Over the course of the last two centuries
they created a technologically developed civilization,
the presence of which, unlike the presence of dolphins,
can be seen from space.
It would seem that our goal has been achieved:
Intelligence has been found.
If it wasn’t for one odd factor:
Why did this intelligence choose dry land for its habitat,
rather than water, which feeds life?
Not a three-dimensional, flowing environment,
but a hard, flat plane?
We thought it was important to find out what that would lead to.
NG: The level of development of dolphins and people
is far beyond other species.
They have much in common.
Both have the largest and most highly organized brains on the planet.
Dolphins are in first place, followed by people,
and then, a long way back, come the rest.
Both are viviparous mammals.
They both only breathe on the surface,
holding their breath when they dive into the water.
The body temperature of both species is 36.6 °C,
the result of the thermal capacity of water,
of which they are both formed for the most part.
Both are individuals
with personal characteristics and unique features.
Dolphins and people are the only inhabitants of this planet
that make love face to face,
and do it not only to continue their line, but for joy.
Both pass the mirror test proving the possession of self-awareness.
Dolphins pass it immediately after birth;
people only pass it when they reach the age of about a year and a half.
Both species possess one of the key signs of intelligence –
an ability to undertake non-reactive behavior.
They can be guided not by external factors but by an internal code of behavior
that can sometimes even overcome the instinct for self-preservation
in the name of love, friendship and empathy,
or for some other reason
that goes beyond their own personal momentary interests.
AG: Despite all these similarities, they have chosen
fundamentally different ways of life and values.
The cetaceans have chosen direct interaction with nature;
humanoids have decided to master nature.
People’s everyday culture is, for the most part,
orientated towards the creation and consumption of material objects.
The culture of dolphins is a practice of direct interaction
with one another and with the universe.
It is clear that the main instruments for this dialogue
are not their limbs and appendages.
They are their brains, hearts, and organs of perception,
which are capable not only of perceiving,
but also of transmitting information.
The skills required for such varied tasks have little in common,
but in both cases they form the basis
for the complex social interaction that both species demonstrate,
and for the content of both schools.
Among the dolphins,
continuity in the passing on of knowledge is entirely stable.
Among people
fundamental knowledge is subordinated to a temporary social contract,
and as a result of this, particularly at turning points in history,
fundamental knowledge is lost
or reexamined by the subsequent generation.
NG: Almost any activity undertaken by dolphins
comprises three main components:
play as a creative modeling of a situation,
love as a source for every action,
and a sensitive interaction with the surrounding environment.
They are the only beings on the planet that are never entirely asleep,
and even when resting they always maintain an awareness.
All of these elements are present in people’s lives,
but they are predominantly marginal and exceptional,
rather than basic.
AG: People’s time, roughly speaking,
is allocated evenly between three activities:
sleep,
so-called “business”,
and so-called “recreation”.
(Applause)
Business, an activity that is specific to people,
has material profit as its goal.
It heads the hierarchy of human concerns.
In view of this activity’s disconnection from natural spheres of life,
it causes personal weariness among people,
that forces them to give themselves over to so-called “recreation” –
pastimes that are, for the most part, packed with external sensory irritants
that engender a condition of forgetfulness
that’s capable of blocking out the deficit of answers
to existential issues concerning ultimate meaning,
one’s personal calling and sources of happiness and joy.
With such a way of life,
it’s only natural that the majority of people
are bewildered, repressed,
lonely, and unhealthy.
About 20 million suicide attempts are recorded every year.
NG: Conditions of this kind, depression in particular,
are also evident in the lives of dolphins.
For them, however, they are the exception,
and are for the most part brought on by events
such as the loss of those close to them, or the loss of freedom.
Suicide among dolphins, including mass suicides
which have become more frequent in recent years,
are the result of technogenic- anthropogenic factors,
such as unbearable,
first and foremost, acoustic pollution of their environment.
AG: A crucial attribute of intelligence
is the possession of a language –
not only as a means for communication within the species,
but also as a way of interacting with the world.
The language of people, for the most part, is a selection of codes, of symbols,
that in themselves are lifeless
and can only provisionally convey information,
irrespective of the condition of the consciousness of the speaker.
This allows, for example, for systematic lying.
NG: The language of dolphins
assumes a perfect psychological and mental congruence of the speaker
and is inseparably linked with his emotional condition
and his sincere intentions.
Such a language is intended for direct influence
on the surrounding environment.
People once had elements of such a language
but now they have either been lost, or cordoned off
in the realm of entertainment, such as music,
or the realm of alternative practices, such as prayer.
The photo shows a visualization
of those linguistic patterns of dolphins and humans that are the closest.
AG: Today, mankind is the determining factor
for the planet’s equilibrium.
Mankind’s scientists have themselves identified this epoch in the Earth’s life
as the Anthropocene.
People spend the bulk of their resources on the creation of means of destruction.
Over half the total number of species has been destroyed,
nine-tenths of the planet has been polluted,
non-renewable resources have for the most part been exhausted.
In the photograph, on the left are ocean dolphins;
on the bottom right is a so-called “dolphinarium”.
NG: Dolphins, on the contrary,
are the strongest stabilizing factor on the planet,
and, first and foremost,
for the two resources that are most crucial for life:
water and air.
As a result of their vital activity, chemical elements and compounds
that are necessary for the formation of air
are brought to the surface from the depths of the oceans.
Almost 2/3 of the planet’s air is formed in this way.
People call it the “big biological pump”.
At the same time, the songs of the whales,
which represent the most powerful
and harmonically organized sound vibrations in living nature,
have a therapeutic influence on polluted and “deformed” water,
even on an intermolecular level.
Annual meetings of thousands of whales at several points on the planet
are key events for the planet’s equilibrium.
AG: Such varied results from the activities of dolphins and people
are a direct consequence
of the differences in these two pictures of the world,
two worldviews.
People’s worldview is to this day founded on conceptions
of the self-sufficiency of matter.
On that basis, all cause-and-effect links
are only recognized in the material plane.
The main components of physical formulas remain:
time, which engenders fear,
space, engendering isolation,
and mass, which is to say, objects.
Conceptions of the non-locality and non-linearity
of interaction in the universe to this day remain unclear,
and the idea of their inclusion in physical formulas
or inclusion consciousness in these formulas as an active force
are rejected as unscientific.
NG: It’s obvious that with such conceptions
of the capabilities of dolphins,
for example, their capacity to use the energy of the surrounding space,
or their therapeutic abilities,
they are deemed inexplicable by people.
For the scientific community, they are a taboo subject,
as they entirely refute the existing reductionist paradigm.
Even the simple act of dolphins swimming is one of these mysteries,
as the accepted formulas don’t account for them swimming with such speed
with the energy resources that they are assumed to possess.
It’s difficult to believe, but dolphins are for the most part
studied by biologists alone,
and what’s more, this is done in conditions of captivity, or as corpses,
when life has departed them, which, of course, provides nothing.
AG: In the circumstances of such a colossal rupture,
contact between people and dolphins is almost entirely absent.
People cannot recognize intelligence in dolphins –
that recognition would lead
to an inevitable revision of their own fundamental values and way of life.
Mankind prefers expending vast resources in the process,
to search for technologically developed civilizations
that are similar to its own, far away in space,
failing to notice developed intelligence within arm’s reach.
Dolphins have no reason to insist.
They don’t have any answers to questions
as to the best way for the consumer to behave,
and mankind, as a species, and at the present time,
doesn’t have any other clearly formulated questions.
NG: Nevertheless, on an individual, naive level,
contacts between them do occur.
This by no means ranks as an inter-species interaction,
as at present just a few thousand people swim with dolphins,
which is to say a maximum of one in a million.
But nevertheless, it’s still something,
because for each of them this contact is transformative.
It irreversibly changes
their normal conceptions of the world as a whole
and of their own lives.
It massively increases the scale and values
of the person’s reference points,
and, in essence, takes that person outside the confines of the accepted consensus.
AG: According to one of the definitions of intelligence,
it is an ability to use the strength of the world
without destroying that world.
It would seem that the verdict is clear.
But we were prevented from reaching a final conclusion by one paradox.
Suffering from unbearable pollution,
whale-hunting flotillas, imprisonment,
and being forced to participate in entertainments shows
and military experiments,
dolphins don’t avenge themselves on people,
under any circumstances.
In each of these creatures,
which rank among the most powerful predators on the planet,
there is a taboo against harming people.
They cannot kill people.
Why?
Having spent 5,000 Earth hours with dolphins,
we are convinced that this is the answer:
they see in people
what people themselves can’t even see today.
This can be compared with the attitude
of a mature creature to a newborn child
which doesn’t know what it is doing.
There is no reason to interact with it,
there is only the absolute value of its life,
because within it lies possibility.
NG: If you ask us to talk about Earth’s inhabitants in just a few words,
we would say that dolphins are about love
and people are about search.
A search is always movement off the beaten track,
and mistakes are unavoidable.
But if you know who you are
and where you’re coming from,
and you can see some sense in that path,
mistakes are merely feedback, they are not a route.
Dolphins are about the maintenance of the stability of the living planet,
of life in general.
People are about the creation of ideas that transform the world.
What those ideas will be
and what the coming world will be like,
all this depends on the world outlook.
AG: Turning people to another system of coordinates,
to another position that is proposed by cetaceans,
can not only lead mankind out of its civilizational dead end,
it can also open up the colossal potential of true development
that mankind possesses.
Dolphins embody a preserving intelligence,
while humans are endowed with the possibility
of creative intelligence.
(Applause)
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